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Malcolm Gladwell on the hollowness of Twitter/Facebook

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Woody wore Sambas
This http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all is an outstanding article by Malcolm Gladwell that discusses the hollowness and fatuousness of the twitter/facebook craze, while also reminding one of the real qualities of courage, organization, and true friendship/brotherhood that it takes to make a real revolution. There is a reason, IMO, that twitter is perfect for people like Paris Hilton and Antonio Cromartie......
 
If anyone has reads Andrew Sullivan's blog at The Atlantic, he's been gathering great counters to this piece by Gladwell, who he acknowledges is generally a pretty interesting and profound thinker. The crux of these posts seems to be that Gladwell's argument largely ignores the role that technology has always played in revolutions, whether it be the printing press, radio, television, SMS, Internet, or specific web-based tools like Facebook and Twitter. These technologies don't create revolutions; they make them more tenable. I think Andrew Sullivan can be a real blowhard sometime. I typically read his blog because he's such an active blogger and links to all sorts of original content that actually is quite interesting and persuasive. But I do think he's right on the mark on this one.
 
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Twitter is incredibly shallow, self-absorbed and destructive to the communication skills and habits of america.

News and revolts can be passed through Twitter. That doesn't undo the overwhelming majority of tweets being devoted to mind numbing frivolity.

Stop telling me what you ate, what you watched, what mood you are in. I don't care.

And don't even get me started on legitimizing an even more fragmented excuse for English. It is one thing when kids use short hand on AOL, texts or Facebook. It ie truly depressing when major leaders and icons in America follow suit.

Facebook keeps us connected on a surface level in great ways, while also inundating us with waves of trivial news or thoughts we didn't want or need to know.

Facebook helps maintain contact that we otherwise would lose in most circumstances, but it also replaces deeper more personal interactions with fleeting exchanges.
 
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jwinslow;1901150; said:
Twitter is incredibly shallow, self-absorbed and destructive to the communication skills and habits of america.

News and revolts can be passed through Twitter. That doesn't undo the overwhelming majority of tweets being devoted to mind numbing frivolity.

Stop telling me what you ate, what you watched, what mood you are in. I don't care.

And don't even get me started on legitimizing an even more fragmented excuse for English. It is one thing when kids use short hand on AOL, texts or Facebook. It ie truly depressing when major leaders and icons in America follow suit.

Facebook keeps us connected on a surface level in great ways, while also inundating us with waves of trivial news or thoughts we didn't want or need to know.

Facebook helps maintain contact that we otherwise would lose in most circumstances, but it also replaces deeper more personal interactions with fleeting exchanges.

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sepia5;1901136; said:
FWIW, if anyone saw his recent interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN, he definitely backed off of his "Twitter and Facebook have nothing to do with revolutions" schtick.

I didn't think he backed off much at all! He believes, quite sensibly, that the revolts would happen without social media. Social media just was a help in organizing.
 
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jwinslow;1901150; said:
Twitter is incredibly shallow, self-absorbed and destructive to the communication skills and habits of america.

News and revolts can be passed through Twitter. That doesn't undo the overwhelming majority of tweets being devoted to mind numbing frivolity.

Stop telling me what you ate, what you watched, what mood you are in. I don't care.

And don't even get me started on legitimizing an even more fragmented excuse for English. It is one thing when kids use short hand on AOL, texts or Facebook. It ie truly depressing when major leaders and icons in America follow suit.

Facebook keeps us connected on a surface level in great ways, while also inundating us with waves of trivial news or thoughts we didn't want or need to know.

Facebook helps maintain contact that we otherwise would lose in most circumstances, but it also replaces deeper more personal interactions with fleeting exchanges.
So I'm guessing you're not a big fan of television.
 
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Taosman;1901178; said:
I didn't think he backed off much at all! He believes, quite sensibly, that the revolts would happen without social media. Social media just was a help in organizing.

I thought he backed off. He stated up front, (and I'm paraphrasing), "Well, keep in mind, I wrote that article well before this wave of protest and revolution we've seen across the Arab world in the past many weeks." Throughout the interview, he wasn't nearly as bold in his language as he was in that article. And frankly, to the extent he stood by his argument, he largely continues to rebut an argument that no one is making. No one is saying that social media like Twitter and Facebook cause social uprisings and revolutions; anyone who is paying attention has to admit, however, that these new social media have been an incredible facilitator of such phenomenon. Gladwell's argument is largely beyond the point.

I have to admit, however, that I'm not a big Gladwell fan, so maybe my feelings on this matter are somewhat colored by that sentiment. I stand firmly with those who believe that Gladwell's clear minded revelations tend to be nothing more than obvious realities dolled up with glittery and sophisticated language. There tend to be "tipping points" which lead to big changes? You don't say!
 
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GLADWELL: I - I think it's very important to say that my article was written back in the summer well before this has happened. I've been as dumbstruck as everybody else by what's happened in the Middle East. And I would love to kind of - I mean, people are going to do that over course of the next months and years, just to try and figure out what exact role - what exact role did these new tools play in shaping these uprisings?

But I can't look in the past at social revolutions and see examples of cases where people had a problem under - under dire circumstances of getting lots of people together to voice their concerns, right? I mean, in East Germany, a million people gathered in the streets of Berlin. They were - the percentage of people in East Berlin in East Germany who even had a telephone in 1989 was 13 percent, right?

So, I mean, in cases where there are no tools of communication, people still get together. So I don't see that as being a - in looking at history, I don't see the absence of efficient tools of communication as being a limiting factor on the ability people to socially (INAUDIBLE).
 
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Taosman;1901206; said:
GLADWELL: I - I think it's very important to say that my article was written back in the summer well before this has happened. I've been as dumbstruck as everybody else by what's happened in the Middle East. And I would love to kind of - I mean, people are going to do that over course of the next months and years, just to try and figure out what exact role - what exact role did these new tools play in shaping these uprisings?

But I can't look in the past at social revolutions and see examples of cases where people had a problem under - under dire circumstances of getting lots of people together to voice their concerns, right? I mean, in East Germany, a million people gathered in the streets of Berlin. They were - the percentage of people in East Berlin in East Germany who even had a telephone in 1989 was 13 percent, right?

So, I mean, in cases where there are no tools of communication, people still get together. So I don't see that as being a - in looking at history, I don't see the absence of efficient tools of communication as being a limiting factor on the ability people to socially (INAUDIBLE).

My emphasis. There's a reason he started his interview with that statement. The rest of what you posted, to me, only illustrates what I'm talking about when I say that he's trying to respond to an argument that no one is making. His example of East Berlin and his reference to lack of telephones (I have no idea whether his figure is accurate), is a great example. Would Gladwell have us believe that social movements and mass revolt just happen spontaneously? Of course that isn't the case. Such a phenomenon obviously takes a great deal of coordination, which takes broad communication, regardless of the medium. Word of mouth is the most basic way that this transpires. Martin Luther's use of the printing press is an example of how technology can facilitate this process. As we saw, tragically, in Rwanda, radio can help organize and drive large groups to action.

Social media like Facebook and Twitter are only the most recent technology that fits into this history. They certainly help foment organized social unrest. Further, one unique aspect of social media delivered via the Internet results in it having perhaps a greater capacity to facilitate social uprisings: its peer to peer aspect. When a message is distributed via a print medium (e.g. newspapers) or broadcasted via TV or radio, the message is sent by one to many. Social media allows for an instantaneous and rapid dissemination of information wherein the recipient also has an opportunity to participate in the creation of the message. Instead of one set of eyes and ears, you have a large community of eyes and ears spanning beyond national borders. Social media is simply much faster, more powerful, and more ubiquitous. Why Gladwell can't just admit that it has played a crucial role in facilitating what has happened in the Arab world, I have no idea. People are naming their children "Facebook" in Egypt for heaven's sakes! Give it up man!
 
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